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Hu was born in Shanghai, China to Hu Chuan (胡傳; Hú Chuán) and Feng Shundi (馮順弟; Féng Shùndì), with ancestry from Jixi County in Anhui province. Family legend has it that Hu Shih's ancestors were descended from the last teenage Emperor of Tang China (being different in origin from the rest of the Hu clan), who fled in disguise with a loyal minister of court in 907 to Anhui and eventually took the name as his son. In January 1904, his family arranged his marriage to Chiang Tung-hsiu (江冬秀; Jiāng Dōngxiù), an illiterate girl with bound feet who was one year older than he was. The marriage took place in December 1917. Hu received his fundamental education in Jixi and Shanghai.

He quit New Youth in the 1920s and published several political newspapers and journals with his friends. His most important contribution was the promotion of vernacular Chinese in literature to replace Classical Chinese, which ideally made it easier for the ordinary person to read.[2] The significance of this for Chinese culture was great—as John Fairbank put it, "the tyranny of the classics had been broken".[3] Hu devoted a great deal of energy, however, to rooting his linguistic reforms in China's traditional culture rather than relying on imports from the west. As his biographer Jerome Grieder put it, Hu's approach to China's "distinctive civilization" was "thoroughly critical but by no means contemptuous."[4] For instance, he made a major contribution to the textual study of the Chinese classical novel, especially the 18th century novel Dream of the Red Chamber, as a way of establishing the vocabulary for a modern standardized language.[5] His Peking University colleague Wen Yuan-ning dubbed Hu a "philosophe" for his wide-ranging humanistic interests and expertise.[6]

Hu was the ROC ambassador to the U.S. between 1938 and 1942.[7] He was recalled in September 1942 and was replaced by Wei Tao-ming. Hu then served as chancellor of Peking University, then called National Peking University between 1946 and 1948. In 1957, he became the third president of the Academia Sinica in Taipei, where he remained until his death. He was also chief executive of the Free China Journal, which was eventually shut down for criticizing Chiang Kai-shek.

He died of a heart attack in Nankang, Taipei at the age of 70, and was entombed in Hu Shih Park, adjacent to the Academia Sinica campus. That December, Hu Shih Memorial Hall was established in his memory. It is an affiliate of the Institute of Modern History at the Academia Sinica, and includes a museum, his residence, and the park. Hu Shih Memorial Hall offers audio tour guides in Chinese and English for visitors.

Hu Shih's work fell into disrepute in mainland China until a 1986 article, written by Ji Xianlin, "A Few Words for Hu Shi", advocated acknowledging not only Hu Shih's mistakes, but also his contributions to modern Chinese literature. His article was sufficiently convincing to many scholars that it caused a re-evaluation of the development of modern Chinese literature and the role of Hu Shih.[8] Selection 15 of the Putonghua Proficiency Test is a story about Hu Shi debating the merits of Written vernacular Chinese over Classical Chinese.[9]

The second translation as simplified Chinese: 实用主义; traditional Chinese: 實用主義; pinyin: shíyòngzhǔyì was crafted long after pragmatism became popular in China at that time due to Hu's endeavor. This secondary translation has become dominant today, but the intention of such terminology substitution was highly suspected to politically defame Hu for the term 實用 had been evolved into a derogatory sense.[citation needed]

Hu was well known as the primary advocate for the literary revolution of the era, a movement which aimed to replace scholarly classical Chinese in writing with the vernacular spoken language, and to cultivate and stimulate new forms of literature. In an article originally published in New Youth in January 1917 titled "A Preliminary Discussion of Literature Reform", Hu originally emphasized eight guidelines that all Chinese writers should take to heart in writing:

Write with substance. By this, Hu meant that literature should contain real feeling and human thought. This was intended to be a contrast to the recent poetry with rhymes and phrases that Hu saw as being empty.

Do not imitate the ancients. Literature should not be written in the styles of long ago, but rather in the modern style of the present era.

Respect grammar. Hu did not elaborate at length on this point, merely stating that some recent forms of poetry had neglected proper grammar.

Reject melancholy. Recent young authors often chose grave pen names, and wrote on such topics as death. Hu rejected this way of thinking as being unproductive in solving modern problems.

Eliminate old clichés. The Chinese language has always had numerous four-character sayings and phrases used to describe events. Hu implored writers to use their own words in descriptions, and deplored those who did not.

Do not use allusions. By this, Hu was referring to the practice of comparing present events with historical events even when there is no meaningful analogy.

Do not use couplets or parallelism. Though these forms had been pursued by earlier writers, Hu believed that modern writers first needed to learn the basics of substance and quality, before returning to these matters of subtlety and delicacy.

Do not avoid popular expressions or popular forms of characters. This rule, perhaps the most well-known, ties in directly with Hu's belief that modern literature should be written in the vernacular, rather than in Classical Chinese. He believed that this practice had historical precedents, and led to greater understanding of important texts.

In April of 1918, Hu published a second article in New Youth, this one titled "Constructive Literary Revolution – A Literature of National Speech". In it, he simplified the original eight points into just four:

Speak only when you have something to say. This is analogous to the first point above.

Speak what you want to say and say it in the way you want to say it. This combines points two through six above.

Speak what is your own and not that of someone else. This is a rewording of point seven.

Speak in the language of the time in which you live. This refers again to the replacement of Classical Chinese with the vernacular language.

The following excerpt is from a poem titled Dream and Poetry, written in vernacular Chinese by Hu. It illustrates how he applied those guidelines to his own work.

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